by Karen Enriquez

Imagine if St. Teresa’s had a curriculum particularly designed to fulfill each student’s needs. Each individual has different talents and interest. Imagine you had a schedule particularly filled with classes designed just for you. Let’s face it: many times we learn things in class that we later forget. In the end some classes are just there taking up time, when instead they could be replaced with relevant classes.

It is expected for us to know what we want to spend the rest of our lives doing once we get to college. You want to be a doctor, what kind? Did you not know you had to take biology and chemistry? Oh, so you just found out you enter a severe state of shock when you see needles and blood? Maybe you aren’t meant to be a doctor, if you had just found out in high school.

High School is the transition from being a child to becoming an adult. In high school we begin to think about career paths and college. It is fair to say that once a student graduates high school they have an idea of what they want to be in life. Yet every year college students change their majors and spend thousands of dollars of classes they should have taken in high school.

This is the reality that students are facing now every day. Here at St. Teresa`s we have a great curriculum, with a balance of all the basic knowledge in each subject. However, having curriculums that are particular to an individual`s career choice including classroom and hands-on learning would be amazing. It is impossible to build a spaceship by just studying a “Spaceship for Dummies” manual. Truth is we learn from experience which reading and taking notes does not provide.

The difference between thinking that you want to be a nurse and knowing that you are going to be a nurse is just that: having the knowledge and experience.

Why spend hours, days, weeks, months, years stressing about a subject you could care less for. Why carry book after book if the topics they cover are not of your interest? Why spend sleepless nights in a deep state of boredom trying to concentrate on finishing pointless homework?

If our high schools took our wants and needs in consideration students would be ten times more successful. Including career planning courses would make a huge difference in both our perspective and confidence when it comes to college and even life itself. Talking college during the last years of high school is just not enough.

Do not just have a glimpse of the real world but see the whole picture. Schools should completely and fully prepare students for success. The world can be unknown and scary it gets worse if you suddenly realize that you are to walk and discover it alone. Expose students and provide them with the tools to be successful. Maybe then they can avoid being part of the group of students that along the way get lost and become indecisive about the future. Make it your mission to guide students to a future full of certainty and determination.